Blue White Illustrated

ON OFFENSIVE EVOLUTION We're going to learn. Each year, we're going to learn. And then our personnel will also factor into it. When you have a guy like Mike Gesicki, there are going to be as- pects of your o;ense that are magni:ed. Mike's skill set is going to be di;erent than Pat Freiermuth's, for example. Our system will tweak a little bit based on our personnel, based on our sta;, but the core nucleus of who we are and how we operate and how we do things will stay the same. I think we probably look how I ex- pected us to look based on all the con- versations we had in the o;-season. One of the things I've thought Ricky [Rahne] has done a really nice job of is not only being involved in everything the last couple years, but also, once he did take over, he had a very clear pic- ture in his mind and image of how he wanted to do it. I think one of the biggest mistakes that you can make as a head coach or as a coordinator is that you get into that role and then you try to be like the person who was there before you. Billy [O'Brien] is a really good friend of mine. We lived in the same neigh- borhood at the University of Mary- land. We've got a very similar background. But how Billy coaches and how Billy leads is very di;erent and I can't come in and try to be Billy. It's the same way with Ricky. Ricky has got a very different personality than Joe [Moorhead]. And I want to surround myself with players and coaches who are very comfortable in their own skin and own who they are. ... I don't want to be surrounded by all the same personalities and all the same opinions and a bunch of yes- men. I want to be surrounded by a bunch of different people with differ- ent perspectives – diversity, diverse backgrounds, diverse perspectives, diverse ideas – because the only way I'm going to make the best decisions for Penn State is to hear all those things and see all those things and say, OK, great, I've got all the infor- mation, now here's the direction we're going. ON THE LINEBACKERS That group will continue to evolve and grow, and you'll see a lot of guys get an opportu- nity to make plays. I think at some point this season, either someone will take the [MLB] job and take control of it and say "It's mine" because there is a gap, or you'll see a two-headed or three-headed monster continue to evolve there and grow and get better week to week. ON THE RECEIVERS I think both Juwan [Johnson] and DeAndre [Thompkins] have higher standards and expectations of how they want to play. I have the utmost con:dence in those guys, and I think they are both going to have huge years for us. But yeah, I think there are a few plays they would like to have back, there's no doubt about it. ■ T H E 2 0 1 8 S E A S O N C O A C H S P E A K E X C E R P T S F R O M J A M E S F R A N K L I N ' S R E C E N T P R E S S E R S year. They are relying heavily on play- ers with freshman eligibility, particu- larly on defense, guys like Micah Parsons, Ellis Brooks, Jesse Luketa, Fred Hansard and P.J. Mustipher. Those players need time to get accli- mated before they can be expected to hit their stride. They'll get that time from the coach- ing staff, but they need it from everyone. They need the program's supporters to show patience rather than simply as- suming that two great seasons have firmly re-established Penn State as a perennial power. In some ways, Franklin's effusive per- sonality is at odds with that goal. He's the guy who does a back handspring out of bed every morning, the guy who ends his tweets and texts with excla- mation points rather than periods be- cause periods are boring. His particular brand of 24/7 enthusiasm might seem exhausting to outsiders, but it has clearly captured the imagination of Nittany Lion fans. Penn State listed an attendance of 105,000 for the App State game, and it's a safe bet that few of the fans who had filed into Beaver Stadium were there because they wanted to see a back-and-forth over- time spectacle. Most of them were likely expecting a one-sided romp. They were on hand because they had bought into Franklin's optimistic vi- sion for the program. The one drawback to having such a fe- rocious level of enthusiasm is that there's always a backlash when it goes unrewarded. By winning 11 games in each of the past two seasons, Franklin and his staff have rekindled champi- onship hopes that had laid mostly dor- mant during the last decade of the Pa- terno era and had been forsaken entirely in the years that followed the NCAA sanctions. Being able to dream again has been a good thing for Penn State and its fans, no doubt about it. But it has re- turned the expectations to a place they haven't been in 20 years, and it's possi- ble that this year's team simply doesn't yet have the experience in a handful of key spots to turn those dreams into real- ity. For all its recent success, Penn State still hasn't built the kind of depth throughout its roster that its primary rivals have built. During the past five years, Ohio State has signed four top- five recruiting classes as rated by Ri- vals.com. Michigan has signed two. Penn State has signed one. The class in

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